I visited the nature park and had my eyes opened. As well as feeding and washing the elephants, I learnt about how Thai elephants are treated. How they have their spirits broken at five years old so that they are tame enough to let tourists onto their backs and perform in the streets. It was horrifying, and more so because last time I visited Thailand I actually rode on an elephant.
The nature park is a refuge for elephants rescued from the tourist trade. Elephants that have scarred foreheads from their mahout’s hook, that have broken legs, broken spines, severe malnutrition. And this is not elephants rescued from the extreme cases of owners abusing elephants- this is elephants rescued from what is everyday and accepted in Thailand. There are around 2500 elephants in Thailand, 31 of which live at the nature park in peace. The rest all need saving.
The nature park is not an anti-Thai place. The owner is Thai. All she offers is an alternative, a way to let tourists see the elephants that they often come to Thailand especially for, but see them as animals. If you were in Africa on safari, you wouldn’t expect to sit on the elephants, but seeing them from a distance would be reward enough. Thai elephants are not any more domesticated naturally.
If anyone is interested in elephants, please support the Nature camp, or in the very least, refrain from taking tours on the backs of elephants which cripple them and threaten them with extinction from Thailand.
People doing this are also doing these things:
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Well, Mr. Elephant, I’m going to be in Thailand tomorrow, and sometime during the week we will get to meet face to face. Or face to knee, because your face is probably too high up. And I will take many pictures of you, and you will spray water on me.
Here’s my favourite joke from when I was about six.
Q. What’s grey and has a trunk?
It’s time for your sponge bath.
Oh, no, my mistake. One week early. See you next week, Mr. Elephant.
This goal is actually going to happen! I’m going to visit the elephant care centre in Chaing-Mai next week, which is where they take care of elephants that they have saved from the tourist industry. Which is kind of ironic because they are now a tourist destination. But they take really good care of the elephants, and so I’ll get to feed them and ‘dust’ them and wash them in a river!
